done. 5,000 metres across the royal docks in about an hour and thirty six, in eighteen degree water, with no wall to push off once.

the timing tag tore off my ankle on the third leg so there is no official time. i have the number off video timestamps instead, which i am choosing to find funny.

we passed the £500, so i have moved it to £1,000 and left the page open until 20.09.26. probably optimistic. anything that lands is more one-to-one lesson time for a child who would otherwise not be taught at all. thank you for everything so far.

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i recently qualified to teach children to swim.

water competence should be ordinary. float first, then breathe, then kick, then everything else. a child who trusts a float trusts every skill that sits on top of it. most people are never taught in that order, which is why so many adults still won't go out of their depth.

level water teaches disabled children to swim, one to one, at their own pace. same order, more patience, for the children who get the fewest chances to learn it.

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here is what i did not know before the event.

three weeks prior i swam 22,500 metres across four days at a camp in spain. the longest of those was 4,700 metres, ninety four percent of the race distance, and it is the one i rated easiest. so i arrived thinking the distance was the question.

it was not. every metre i had on record was collected fifty metres at a time, with a hand on the tiles at each end and a second back that no training log counts. four hundred and fifty of those in four days. take the walls away and it is a different sport.

there was no warmup. the race is the warmup. you walk in when your wave is called and the clock is already going, so the first kilometre goes on getting one.

the last kilometre was the hardest. the wind had been behind us the whole way out and i had not noticed, so i spent two legs thinking i was swimming better than i was.

there is a runway on the far side of the water. you hear the planes underwater before you see them.

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the page stays open until 20.09.26 if anyone still wants to add to it.

i wrote the whole thing up, including the two questions the day did not answer: devaqua.blue/journal/the-race-is-the-warmup/